


Primordial Singularity

by Zodiac



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Body Horror, Church AU, Cults, Cults are bad and you shouldn't join them, Except it's actually a cult fronting as a church, Gen, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Monsters, Obligatory disclaimer that this has nothing to do with an actual cult, POV Second Person, Rituals, Transformation, eldritch horror, even if they give you amazing baths and skin care routines, ritual bathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28911081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zodiac/pseuds/Zodiac
Summary: You saw through the deception laced into every sweet word, every friendly smile that the black-garbed priests—”Ascians”, they dubbed themselves—offered someone interested in their faith. You saw the hidden meanings and implications tucked away in their beliefs, the murky darkness lurking just beneath the surface. A cult through and through, its members constantly on the watch for more potential recruits to bring into their fold. But, where others would have run screaming for help upon such revelations, you instead embraced the teachings and what they had to say about the world at large, walking right into those warm, welcoming arms.Or… That was what you told yourself now, at least. Anything to protect your fragile mind from the horrors you had unwittingly stumbled upon, the fallacy of sunken cost and your own damnable pride keeping you mired in it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Primordial Singularity

**Author's Note:**

> Little thing based on [a post](https://twitter.com/HippestGlitch/status/1345994316968316928?s=20) I made about an AU where the Ascians are a cult for Zodiark that fronts as a church and also he gives them access to eldritch powers as a reward because more monsters is always good.

Normally, having the attention of a cult was only reason for anxiety and rightful paranoia, nervous glances out into the darkness of night, the feel of non-existent eyes raking over you when you're out alone.

But not for you. Not for this cult.

You beheld their teachings, coated with the polished, pristine veneer of a "proper" religion, all the better to lure new followers in while keeping potential threats out. Saccharine-sweet words about how, as individuals, society was lost and aimless. Only by coming together for the betterment of the whole could they flourish and prosper. It was simply a bonus that it also doubled as their way of worshipping their most benevolent, caring god, Zodiark. Carefully-phrased tenets and scriptures, a narrative crafted so lovingly that no one would give them a second, scrutinous glance.

And then you came along.

You saw through the deception laced into every sweet word, every friendly smile that the black-garbed priests—”Ascians”, they dubbed themselves—offered someone interested in their faith. You saw the hidden meanings and implications tucked away in their beliefs, the murky darkness lurking just beneath the surface. A cult through and through, its members constantly on the watch for more potential recruits to bring into their fold. But, where others would have run screaming for help upon such revelations, you instead embraced the teachings and what they had to say about the world at large, walking right into those warm, welcoming arms.

Or… That was what you told yourself now, at least. Anything to protect your fragile mind from the horrors you had unwittingly stumbled upon, the fallacy of sunken cost and your own damnable pride keeping you mired in it.

But only in your deepest moments of doubt did that facade waver, your faith in your newfound god faltering for just the briefest of instants. Here, now, when you were being pampered by your fellow cultists, that nagging little fact couldn't be further from your mind.

You would become one of them, they assured you in the most gentle of tones, but it would take time, time and preparation. To gaze upon Zodiark unprepared for His glory is to gaze upon an unfathomable abyss, so, so dark and deep that your mind, simple fleshy matter that it is, would come nowhere close to comprehending it. To invite Him into your fragile psyche without the proper training would be to invite madness itself within you, even a fraction of His presence overwhelming enough to shatter your everything.

So, you allowed them to ready you for Him, reluctant for it only due to how eager you were to experience His grace as your fellow cultists had.

And, as you allowed them to perform their work on you, they allowed you to witness the potency of His gifts.

With His powers, they shucked their mortal guises as if they were little more than the carapaces of crustaceans. Shells discarded, they slithered or stumbled or crawled before you, each one of them unique in their gorgeous grotesqueness. Feathered wings that spanned beyond the size of a person. Slimy tendrils the color of fresh bruises that blindly sought their way across the floor. Haloes wreathed in amethyst fire that extinguished light rather than generating it. Twisted hands, gnarled claws, lashing tails, and various limbs that couldn’t even begin to compare with any appendage that you knew of. Their bodies were all black as night, tainted and blessed by His power, the power over darkness itself. From within that inky pitch, eyes would blink open and focus on you seemingly at random, bright purple accretion disks within those otherwise empty voids. A moment, two, then, just as you had focused in on them, began to be drawn  _ into _ them, they snapped shut, though you could still make out the barest of slits between the eyelids if you stared closely enough, individual event horizons that threatened to swallow you whole if given the chance.

They never allowed you the opportunity.

After all, that was  _ His _ privilege.

With reaching, grasping limbs, they led you to a sumptuous bathroom. While the part of their church that faced the public held humble, simple trappings, the bath that greeted you was anything but. A massive marble thing that you had to be helped into, barely causing a splash in the expanse of the waiting water, warm and perfumed with musk and patchouli, sandalwood and amber.

The Ascians immediately went to work on you, claws oh-so delicately massaging shampoo into your hair, being careful not to scrape against your scalp too harshly. At the same time, other limbs rubbed some sort of body scrub onto you, richly purple and pleasantly gritty. When it was washed off, the skin beneath was miraculously smooth and soft, as though you had never had nary a blemish in your lifetime. Your hair was given a similar treatment, rinsed out to transform into the most marvelous silken locks. A nudge of a limb and you shifted, allowing those tender, monstrous touches access to other parts of your body.

As they worked, they whispered and cooed and chittered to you. “It is part of the ritual,” they explained in susurrus murmurs and hissing sighs. “Lord Zodiark will always accept our offerings, but it makes it that much more special to cater to His desires… and to allow you some final vestige of mortal comfort before you truly become one of us.”

Despite your willingness, you couldn't help the tremor of fear that wormed down your spine at that, some basal part of your mind rebelling at the thought of giving up your mortality, nay, your entire sense of self for some dark god. For a moment, it managed to buck that sweet lie you had convinced yourself of, flooding your body with the need to jerk up and flee, flee,  _ flee _ from this group of abominations worshipping an even greater monster.

And then a paw or claw or  _ some _ sort of appendage massaged your back to wash off that scrub, relaxing your tensed muscles and rinsing away that spike of horror along with it. A breath eased out of you, relieved and pleased all at once as that stress left you.

...Whatever you had been thinking, it was gone now. Probably for the best.

Once finished, they eased you out of the tub and swaddled you in a fluffy towel to dry you. As it moved across you, you felt the material so much  _ more _ , every fiber starkly standing out as though having skin was a brand-new experience for you, almost overwhelming your suddenly sensitive nerves.

And then, just as it was on the verge of overstimulating you, it was gone.

In its place, the cultists instead draped luxurious silken cloth, the fabric royal purple and iridescent in what light these worshippers of the dark allowed in their domain. They lovingly wrapped it around you until you couldn't find a beginning or end to it, somehow forming an outfit around you that left just enough skin bared to entice the imagination and nothing more. At the same time, claws managed to run through your hair, styling it with a deftness you wouldn’t have thought to attribute to such monstrous digits. One hand—you certainly couldn’t tell whose anymore—was cupped, holding a small bounty of purple gemstones in the valley it formed. They were little more than chips, tiny fragments that most jewelers would sooner discard than utilize, yet their motions were slow and reverent as they weaved them into your hair and pressed them against your flesh. Where they made contact, your skin tingled pleasantly, warm fizzles of foreign aether binding them to you. After, you could perceive an odd sort of noise emanating from them, a steady, constant drone like the unceasing pump of blood through a body, or perhaps, the muted background hum of the universe itself. You had raised your inner wrist, and one of the gems laid atop it, to your ear, just barely managing to make out murmuring, but the words themselves were lost to you.

“His voice.” One of the Ascians purred. “To hear Him fully is to hear the all-encompassing tone of creation itself. Too, too much for a newcomer without a taste of His power, the softest whisperings of His voice.” A claw ran over that gem on your wrist. “Fragments of Him that have chipped off over the ages, but… they are still alive with His aether. Just enough for one unaccustomed to His will.”

Once they were finished decorating you with pieces of their god, they pulled away and you could feel so, so many eyes upon you, scrutinizing every last bit of your body and the painstaking work they had done to it. For what felt like an eternity, you stood there, frozen beneath the intensity of those monstrous, angelic eyes on you, barely able to draw in breath for fear that, after all of this, they might find some miniscule flaw, some crack in otherwise perfection, that might make you unworthy of their god.

Then, as one, they gathered you up and led you away.

Away from the trappings of luxury once more, taking you back into the facade of a normal church… but not for long. Eventually, you came upon a simple wooden door and one of them produced a key to unlock it, swinging it open to reveal a gaping abyss of a stairwell that very much didn't suit any other type of hallowed house. Down and down they coaxed you, careful to keep you from losing your footing in the pervasive gloom. One step after another you took, feeling as though this invisible staircase was never going to end, until finally, your foot met a solid plane, toes settling against solid ground rather than the overhang of another stair. So focused on your movements, you just now noticed you had stepped down into a hallway that extended to either side of you, torches periodically set into the walls that emanated a purple light that actually illuminated your surroundings, if only slightly. And then, before you could take anything else in, they moved, gently tugging and nudging you along the hallway composed of simple cobblestones, their bare surfaces worn smooth with age.

As you progressed, the gems set into you began to glow with that same energy that fueled those torches, the hum growing louder and clearer, becoming a rumbling croon that spoke to your soul rather than your ears.  _ Come closer… Salvation awaits for those whose minds are open…  _ _ You need only put one foot before the other… _

So you did, trailing after that hanging promise of salvation with the current followers of this god slithering and galumphing with you.

Eventually, you arrived at another door, this one far more elaborate than the one that had come before it. The main material was pitch black and metallic, though it still looked far too…  _ organic _ to be mere iron or steel. In the center was a concentrated mass of that brilliant purple, numerous points radiating out from it like a starburst… or, perhaps, the ribs of some unknowable creature, clutching protectively at its heart.

No key was offered to this door, not that one would do any use; you didn't see a keyhole or even a knob where one might go. Instead, one of the Ascians raised a feathery appendage to the center of the door and the mass there pulsed once, twice, before the black material split along the seams of purple and peeled back into the frame surrounding it with a sound like ripping the skin off an orange.

Within was clearly the holiest ground in this false church.

The floor was composed entirely of rich amethyst, smoothed to create a path through the room, but viciously jagged in other places, reaching up in long crystalline fingers as if to claw at walls and ceiling the color of the void itself. At the end of that path, on the other side of the room, was an altar, carved or maybe even grown from the floor itself, an imposing thing with rough sides, but a flat top. In front of the altar was a statue carved of a crystal darker than the rest, a shade of purple that you had never seen before, weren't certain if normal mortals had even documented before, it was so luxuriantly, sinfully rich. The statue's arms were crossed over its chest and it had thin, sinuous wings tucked at its sides, a vertically-alinged halo crowning the whole affair. You couldn't tear your eyes from it, the murmuring in your soul swelling in excitement, echoing through your everything.

_ So close… So, so close to what I and only I can provide to you… Step forwards, offer yourself, and receive of my blessing as my other loyal followers have… _

Said loyal followers clustered behind you, all inhuman eyes swiveled towards what was undoubtedly their god, motionless out of respect or fear or both.

You moved forwards.

Slowly, you made your way through that room, carefully picking your way through the crystal spires; it wouldn't do to have your body be marred by a misstep after all the work that had been put into it; though blood sacrifices were allegedly welcome in heathen religions such as this, you wanted any blood of yours to be shed by your god Himself, not through a careless accident. As you grew closer to that statue, to that almost-forgotten god, His voice in your head grew louder and louder, a din that rippled through you as surely as cosmic radiation would tear through your fragile flesh, commanding words that clamored for your attention, swiping away your pesky thoughts, the fears that lingered in the fringes of your psyche even now. All you could focus on were sensations: the smooth rock beneath your feet, the perfumes the Ascians bathed you with, steadily being dampened by your own cold sweat, the pressure against your mind, roaring in your ears even though you knew there was no physical sound being made. And, above everything else, the sight of that statue that you couldn't draw your eyes from, even as something dark within it pulsed with your every step, as if in greeting.

Still locking your gaze with Zodiark, you climbed up onto the altar, your limbs acting more out of instinct than any conscious decision on your part. You settled yourself with your back pressed against the altar's surface, limbs splayed out away from your body. This close to the ancient, unknowable god, the gems on you shone as bright as miniature stars and His voice was a veritable boom, every molecule of your being shuddering in awe and horror, trepidation and glee.

_ Such obeisance… Such eagerness… Yes, you will make a fine follower indeed… _

At those words, you could feel your body shift, twisting under the raw power those mere words carried, strength that mere mortals could never hope to bear witness to and survive intact. You gasped then, voice welling up in your chest, preparing to unleash itself in a scream of purest anguish as your fragile human form was shaped to this god’s will…

...A scream that never came.

You could still speak, judging by the harsh, labored breaths leaving you, but you found the will to cry out fade away as his power crashed over your mind in increasingly-strong waves, altering your mind just as He was altering your form, modifying it to mirror those of His followers, to shape it into the perfect, willing receptacle for His power. You could feel it gnawing away at your very sense of self, such a selfish thing insignificant in comparison to carrying out the Ascians’—no,  _ your _ God’s whims. Before it was washed away completely, smothered beneath that indomitable will, you were able to parse one final word in that voice like all the darkest reaches of space.

_ Mine... _

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and wanted to screech at me in a manner similar to socializing, then you can find my Twitter right [here](https://twitter.com/HippestGlitch).


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